NY Tech Meetup: Iminlikewithyou Launches Game Network

Every month Meetup.com CEO Scott Heiferman tells the 400 or so geeks who reliably head out to the NY Tech Meetup they can feel free to boo bad presentations off the stage. But no one ever does, not even the obvious snoozers (and there were one or two).

But here's one tech presentation/comedy routine that had everyone on their toes: iminlikewithyou's Charles Forman invited programmers to join a new casual game network. The plan is to provide would-be Dinglepop designers a bevy of free developer tools to get their games built quickly, and IILWY will handle a lot of the technical heavy lifting for the games on the back-end.

Money? Sure, maybe. Like other casual games promoters, IILWY is premised on Americans learning to love the Asian freemium model. "In Korea, all the games are free, you pay for upgrades," Forman said. He thinks a racing game, for instance, might get dedicated players to pay 50 cents for a custom paint job on their car, or a buck for better tires. The split? He's not sure yet, but thinks developers on his network will keep about 70%.